In the 1950s, nuclear power was touted as the new wave in energy production. It would be safe, easy to manage and reliable. By 1954, before any nuclear plants were built, it began to look as if nuclear power was so good that electricity might even become too cheap to meter. Imagine that!
Nuclear power plants were built, and they began to produce electricity, and at first everything began to look like nuclear power was exactly as it had been predicted. What no one foresaw in the beginning was the major problem with nuclear waste storage. Estimates say nuclear waste will take up to three million years to become non-radioactive, which is a pretty daunting statistic. Anyone can see a problem here with getting rid of the waste. But what can be done about this? Larger nuclear reactors produced about three tons of waste per year, and this would become the haunting issue for nuclear power plant viability.
This factor, along with higher construction costs as more safety regulations were included in their construction, and the Three Mile Island disaster essentially killed the nuclear power movement. Suddenly, nuclear power was a white elephant with no foreseeable future in the US.
The waste issue bedevils the industry as a whole. Stored nuclear waste must either be buried somewhere in unleakable containers for 3 million years, or the power plants must make containers that last 50 years and then dig up the waste and bury it inside new containers. This process would go on indefinitely, or the waste must be reprocessed. Reprocessing can be done in many ways, which is the best solution to ridding the planet of this problem, but as of 2005, it still wasn't cost effective to reprocess nuclear waste.
How green is nuclear energy? The power generated from nuclear power plants creates essentially zero emissions. Nuclear rods heat water into steam, which drives generators and puts electricity into the lines. You can see how in the early fifties this really looked like a great idea. Find a source of cold water, and any river or large lake, and you have free power.
But what to do about the waste? To bury it means making containers that last for millions of years, which is virtually impossible. Reprocessing means turning waste back into usable rods that can power the reactors. However, that is not cost effective, so no one wants to do it. If it is done, nuclear power becomes far more expensive than conventional ways to produce electricity.
There is little doubt that at some point nuclear power, even with all of its safety and waste issues, will become the green power it has been expected to be. But do we want to invest in it, when we have other options such as solar, wind, hydrogen and batteries? And that's why we have to ask the question, nuclear power: green or not so green?
Source: BecauseAction.com
